Volume
XXXVIII No.2
Summer
2015
Join
us for Vision Expo!
Please join us for the 10th annual Indiana
Vision Expo on Saturday, September 26th from 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. at the
Indiana State Library. Please note that due to a change in the library’s
Saturday hours the building will not be open before 10 a.m. The Expo will
feature our usual wide variety of vendors and non-profit agencies that provide
the latest in adaptive technology, independent living aids, and other resources
for all ages. There will be multiple vendors new to the Expo this year,
including HIMS, maker of products such as the Braille Sense Notetaker
and the BookSense DAISY player.
Our keynote speaker is Kathy Nimmer,
2015 Indiana Teacher of the Year and finalist for National Teacher of the Year.
Kathy has taught English at Harrison High School in West Lafayette for over
twenty years despite being blind. She is
also a published author whose work includes Two
Plus Four Equals One: Celebrating the Partnership of
People with Disabilities and Their Assistance Dogs (DB74137). Kathy will be speaking at 10:30, followed by an 11:45
presentation on the latest advancements in the treatment of eye disease by low
vision specialists Dr. Richard Windsor and Dr. Laura Windsor of the Low Vision
Centers of Indiana.
CJ’s
Sweet Creations will again be selling lunch items and desserts. Admission is
free. Parking will be available for $5 in the Senate Avenue Parking
Garage. The entrance is off of New York
Street between West St. and Senate Ave.
New
Saturday Hours
Effective
September 1, 2015, the Indiana State Library building will be open from 10 a.m.
- 4 p.m on Saturdays, which is a 2 hour change from
the current hours of 8 a.m - 4 p.m.
In
addition, Talking Books staff will no longer be available on Saturdays to
answer patron phone calls as we will be concentrating our staff resources on
best serving you Monday - Friday, which are the days that we send and receive
books in the mail.
Summer
Reading Wrap-up
2015
marked another successful year of our summer reading program for children and
young adults, ages 4 – 18. We had 34
participants who read over 525 Braille, audio, and large print books, including
a number of our recent order of 100 large print children’s books. After we
complete our final tallies we will be distributing prizes in the coming weeks.
Coming
in January: Unified English Braille
On
January 4, 2016 (the 207th birthday of Louis Braille), the National
Library Service for the Blind and Physically handicapped will implement the Unified
English Braille (UEB) code; going forward all new braille
titles added to the collection will be produced in UEB.
NLS
expects the transition to be easy for patrons as the “new code builds on the
old system” using the same six-dot cell pattern as the current system but with
fewer contractions and different spacing rules. The changes should
be especially beneficial to users of computers, smart phones, and e-books.
While
all new books being produced beginning in January will be in UEB, it will probably
be approximately 6 months before physical copies of these books arrive at the
library. In the mean time, NLS has begun adding UEB books to BARD (including Go Set a Watchman BRE00097) which can be
found by selecting “Unified English Braille” in the “Browse by subject” drop
down menu on the BARD homepage.
The
library has a four-page document titled Frequently
Used UEB Symbols available to Braille patrons. Please call or email us at
1-800-622-4970 / tbbl@library.in.gov to
request a copy of this document.
BARD Mobile for Android
Devices
The National
Library Service for the Blind and Physically
handicapped released a new, free BARD Mobile app for Android devices in June.
Available through the Google Play store by searching for “BARD Mobile,” the app
is compatible with Android devices running OS 4.1 or later. The app will allow
users to download and listen to the nearly 50,000 audio books and magazines
currently available through BARD. However, this version of the app does not
currently support web-braille.
"The
BARD Mobile app allows searching, downloading, and reading books and magazines
on one fully accessible, mainstream device," NLS director Karen Keninger said. "It’s a library in your pocket."
NLS released a BARD Mobile app for iOS devices in
2013. The addition of an Android app "will give on-the-go access to an
even larger number of patrons," Keninger said.
The BARD Mobile app for apple devices was released in
2013 and is available through the Apple App Store by searching for “BARD
Mobile”. Since it was released in the fall of 2013, Indiana patrons have
downloaded the app to nearly 800 mobile devices. These patrons now have the
ease and convenience of downloading and listening to books on the go without
carrying around their talking book player. We expect the Android app to
experience a similar level of popularity among users.
If
you are interested in signing up for a BARD account so that you can take
advantage of these mobile apps, visit www.nlsbard.loc.gov to
fill out a brief application.
BARD
Workshop
Anyone
who is interested in attending an in-person BARD workshop should contact the
Talking Books Department by phone or email. If there is sufficient interest, a
workshop will be held on a Saturday at the Indiana State Library. Patrons would
be able to receive in-person assistance with downloading books on their
computer or through their BARD Mobile devices.
Book
Recommendations
As
fall approaches, catch up with some of the most talked about books of the
summer!
In the Unlikely Event by
Judy Blume (DB81763, LP19772)
Miri Ammerman returns to her hometown of Elizabeth, New Jersey
in 1987 to attend a commemoration of the worst year of her life. Thirty-five
years earlier, when Miri was fifteen and in love for
the first time, a succession of airplanes fell from the sky, leaving the
community reeling. Unrated. Commercial
audiobook. 2015.
God Help the Child by
Toni Morrison (DB80615)
Bride,
who was rejected by her light-skinned mother when she was born for being too
black, has made her life into one that many envy. She has her own company, a
fortune, and a lover. Dark secrets from the past are coming home to roost,
however. Unrated. Commercial audiobook. 2015.
Early Warning by
Jane Smiley (DB81494, LP19730)
The
saga of the Langdon family, begun in Some Luck (DB
79659), continues with the death of family patriarch Walter in 1953 on through
1986. While the youngest of Walter's children stays on the Iowa farm, the
others scatter across Cold War-era America. Unrated. Commercial audiobook. 2015.
West of Sunset by
Stewart O’Nan (DB81114, BR20806)
1937.
F. Scott Fitzgerald heads to Hollywood. He leaves behind his wife, Zelda, in a
private mental institution and his daughter, Scottie, in the care of family and
friends. Churning out short stories and scripts, his health deteriorates and
new love beckons. Some strong language and some descriptions
of sex. Bestseller. 2015.
The Book of Joan: Tales of Mirth,
Mischief, and Manipulation by Melissa Rivers (DB81764)
The
daughter of comedian Joan Rivers pulls together some of her favorite anecdotes,
advice, and personal stories of her often outrageous mother, resulting in a
memoir of their relationship. Unrated. Commercial audiobook. 2015.
Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland by
Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus (DB81802, LP19733)
Drawing
upon their recollections and diaries, two of the three victims of Cleveland
school-bus driver Ariel Castro share the story of their abductions, their
decade in captivity, and their dramatic 2013 rescue. Washington Post reporters
Jordan and Sullivan interweave these events with the search efforts. Unrated. Commercial audiobook. 2015.
The Science of Interstellar by
Kip Thorne (DB80621, BR20655)
Theoretical
physicist Kip Thorne, scientific advisor for Christopher Nolan's film
Interstellar, guides readers through the science at work throughout the movie.
Chapters provide context for each of the film's scientific concepts, in
addition to explaining the theory and mechanics of such subjects as wormholes,
planet dynamics, and quantum gravity. 2014
National
Conference Held at the Indiana State Library
The 2015 Tri-Regional Conference of Librarians Serving
the Blind and Physically Handicapped was held at the Indiana State Library from
June 9th-11th. Appropriately themed “Innovate,
Collaborate, Motivate!” the conference brought together 90 librarians from 30
states in the North, South, and Midlands regions of the country to discuss and
share ideas on how to best serve patrons in the future.
The conference kicked off on Tuesday morning with an
informative program by the National Library Service (NLS), which covered
current projects they are working on and their plans for serving patrons in the
future. Exciting items discussed in the NLS session included the introduction
of Unified English Braille (UEB) in January 2016 as well as ideas on how to
serve patrons in the future in a more digital age.
The conference continued Wednesday with programming on
marketing ideas for libraries as well as the importance of accessibility among
today’s current crop of mobile devices. The conference wrapped on Thursday with
an “unconference” session that allowed attendees to
discuss more specific topics of interest among colleagues from around the
country.
Overall,
attendees were impressed by Indiana State Library Foundation’s unwavering
support of the Indiana Talking Book and Braille Library, and gave many effusive
compliments of the conference, the library, and their visits to the city of
Indianapolis.
Meet the Voices of Indiana Voices
In an ongoing effort to provide some insight
into the background of our narrators I have asked them to give me a short bio on
who they are and why they have chosen to volunteer to
be a part of our program. Here are a
couple more of those profiles.
Name : Dennis Brake
Age: 67
Current or Previous
Occupations: Semi-retired
Number of years as a
narrator:
2
Favorite types of books
to read / narrate: American History, Biographies,
Auto-biographies
Reasons for volunteering
with Indiana Voices: I can’t dance, sing, or
act. I have very few talents with my
voice being one of them. I thought I might as well use it for something good.
Name: Kathleen Munsch
Current or Previous
Occupations: Librarian / Archivist for a not-for-profit
education organization
Number of years as a
narrator: 6
Favorite types of books
to read / narrate: They all have their charm, but
I know I dislike auto-biographies.
Reasons for volunteering
with Indiana Voices: My mother began losing her
sight almost a decade ago, and I have a cousin with retinitis pigmentosa, so when
I found myself unemployed at the beginning of 2009, I decided to get involved
in volunteer work related to vision issues.
Indiana Voices kept me most reliably busy, so you win. I’m fortunate that my current employer allows
me to continue on, as I feel the service it provides is very important to
Indiana’s visually impaired citizens.
____________________________________________________________
Indiana Insights is a
publication of the Talking Book and Braille Library, Indiana State
Library. Indiana Insights is also available online, in Braille, or on a
digital cartridge upon request. Any mention of products and
services in the Indiana Insights
newsletter is for information purposes only
and does not imply endorsement. This
project is funded in part with a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library
Services which administers the Library Services Technology act.
Indiana
Talking Book and Braille Library Calendar:
Saturday September 5, 2015 Library Closed
Monday September 7, 2015 Library Closed
Saturday September 26, 2015 Vision Expo
Monday October 12, 2015 Library Closed
Tuesday November 3, 2015 Library Closed
Wednesday November 11, 2015 Library Closed
Thursday November 26, 2015 Library Closed
Friday November 27, 2015 Library Closed
Saturday November 28, 2015 Library Closed
Thursday December 24, 2015 Library
Closed
Friday December 25, 2015 Library Closed
Saturday December 26, 2015 Library Closed
Indiana
Talking Book and Braille Library Hours:
Monday
– Friday 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. __________________________________________________________
Free
Matter for
the
Blind